


Interviews with Francis Bacon

by DonnesCafe



Series: Eccentric Geniuses [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Art, Brotherly Love, Courage, Drug Use, Love, M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnesCafe/pseuds/DonnesCafe
Summary: Sherlock visits Francis Bacon's self-portrait and finds unexpected help.





	

Sherlock first stumbled upon the painting when he was nineteen. Exactly nineteen as it happened. It was his birthday. High on cocaine and freezing his bollocks off in the bitter January twilight, he looked around for somewhere to spend the night. He had, as they say, no fixed abode. He ducked into the Old Tate just before closing. He could evade the guards easily. He melted into a likely-looking alcove, and there it was. He blinked. 

It was the head of a man in torment. The face was grey with anguish, dark mouth opened in a scream. Dark slashes cut the face. The skin was peeling off the cheeks and neck, lit from within by golden fire. Torment, desire, anger? Or was the man burning from within with some great thing, something greater than his mortal frame, burning from the soul outward? Or was it all of those things and more? 

Whoever painted that, he thought… Whoever painted that might understand what his mind was like. Might understand the hunger, the thing clawing him from the inside, the thing that sometimes felt monstrous and sometimes felt like an angel struggling to spread its wings. It was his own face, his true face, the face of his despair, his addiction, his energy, his refusal to settle for anything life had yet shown him. Slowly, he slid down the wall, still looking at the face. 

He had escaped from an enforced stint in rehab in the wilds of Scotland and headed to his beloved city like a homing pigeon to its cage, like a pilgrim to Jerusalem, like a junkie to his supplier. The first two were poetic; the last literal. Sherlock grudgingly acknowledged that his brother’s analysis had been correct on two points. One, left to his own devices at Magdalen, Sherlock had escalated his drug use until he overdosed. Two, cutting him off from his Oxford suppliers had prevented him from relapsing. Mycroft, however, had underestimated both his dedication to self-destruction and his willingness to do anything to escape. 

The guard at the rehab facility had been painfully easy to seduce and make complicit in his schemes. Anything for a blow job. Repeated blow jobs, actually. Transport, Sherlock repeated to himself while on his knees. It’s just transport. Soon enough he was free. Now he was in London, intending to finish the job he started at Magdalen. He just needed to get enough money for sufficient cocaine and morphine to finish it. He looked at the face of the man in the painting again. That was the face of a junkie in withdrawal, the face of hunger and despair. His own face unless he ended it soon. Tomorrow. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” The screaming man didn’t answer him. Sherlock buried his face in his arms and slept. 

In the morning light, the man’s face looked less like an addict and more like a saint. Sherlock blinked. Ridiculous. But the light breaking through his skin. Strange, now it looked more like light, less like fire. Like some beautiful thing was trying to be born. Could it be born without killing the man? A tiny tendril of something curled around his heart. Could he live instead of die? Did he want to live instead of die? He had resisted that idea for a very long time. 

He stood and went up to the painting. Francis Bacon. Self-portrait. God, the poor bugger, he thought. He understood torment. Why did that make him feel … Feel. Why did it make him feel? For reasons he never fully understood, he spent the day looking for a cheap room instead of for drugs. He picked pockets for the first month’s rent in Montague Street instead of selling his sexual services. It felt cleaner somehow. Absurd, he thought, but true. 

When he woke up in the middle of the night, craving and sweating and on fire with desires named and nameless, he thought of the face. 

***** 

Sherlock visited the painting from time to time. The worst times, actually. In his early years in London, he could talk to the skull. The skull was a good listener, but tended to keep its own counsel. Later, he talked to John Watson. He tended to edit himself around John, of course. He wanted John to think well of him. Truth be told, he wanted John to love him. John’s advice when they first started living together tended to be of a practical nature. Eat, sleep, don’t engage in hand-to-hand combat when the suspect has a bloody knife. He appreciated it, but sometimes he needed more existential advice. That’s when he went to talk to Francis Bacon. 

Francis always understood, since they were two of a kind. Francis understood when he relapsed, although the suffering face seemed to call on him to be better, to show more fortitude. The face understood why he jumped from St. Bart’s, since the face had heard the whispered words of love he couldn’t say to the people he actually loved. The face listened when he talked about the torture, the nightmares. He didn’t want to burden John. 

Francis was his icon, his pieta, his saint, his holy relic, his mirror, his double, his father confessor. Utter nonsense, of course, Sherlock thought. Yet he went. 

**** 

Sherlock slipped out of 221b on the morning of the wedding. 

“Where are you going, love?” John asked. “We’ve got to be at St. Margaret’s at 1:00.” 

“Got to see a man about a dog,” Sherlock said. He hadn’t been to see Francis for a while. He needed to tell him that the anguish had been worth it. That the fire inside had been returned, passion for passion. That every wound, every sacrifice… that he would do it again and again for his life. For this life. 

“You’re not going to stand me up at the altar, are you? Not getting cold feet? Jesus, Sherlock…” 

Sherlock strode over to John, put both hands on his face, and kissed him with fervor. 

“Don’t be idiotic, John. I’ll be back in plenty of time.” 

He got a cab to the Tate, lept out, and bounded up the steps. He entered the alcove and there was a blank wall in front of him. Francis was gone. His heart sank. Now of all times. Today of all days. He must have made a sound, because a guard walked up to him, concern written all over his face. 

“All right, gov?” 

“The face… the painting, I mean. Francis Bacon. Where is he… it?” 

“Oh, that one. Creepy thing, innit? Sold, I heard. Private collector with more money than sense if you ask me. Heard it fetched millions.” 

Sherlock turned away, an obscure pain in his chest. Ridiculous, he thought. It was just a painting. It’s your wedding day. Be happy. 

When he got back to Baker Street, John was already dressed in the fetching bespoke suit that Sherlock had picked out for him. 

“Get dressed, for God’s sake,” said John. “Mrs. Hudson’s been up here three times already wanting to see us together in our finery. Oh, hang on….” He pointed toward a large square package leaning up against the wall of the lounge, just inside the door. "Delivery for you. Not us, you specifically, so probably not a wedding present, yeah?” 

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. What the hell? He strode over to the package and ripped the brown paper from the front of it. The face looked out at him. 

He fumbled for the white card taped to the frame. 

_I couldn’t be prouder of you or happier for your future with John. Since I know your friends are precious to you, I didn’t want you to lose any of those who helped you along the way. With sincere affection, Mycroft_

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration and title from David Bowie's list of favorite books: #1 - _Interviews with Francis Bacon_ by David Sylvester.
> 
> If you'd like to see the painting, here's a link: 
> 
>  
> 
> [Francis Bacon Self Portrait](http://img05.deviantart.net/f9b5/i/2009/160/1/4/francis_bacon_self_portrait_by_borrowedfantasies.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> This series will be 100 short fics, each taking inspiration from the title of one of Bowie's favorite books. The title of the series is a hat-tip to the similarities between two eccentric geniuses, Sherlock Holmes and David Bowie. Both men are(were) beautiful, creative, wildly intelligent, and fictional constructs (each in his own way).


End file.
